serving in the extreme if she failed to know him,
once she glimpsed him in the crowd.

Somewhere near one o'clock he lost Jack completely, and drifted
aimlessly alone. Jack had been hailed by a friend, had stopped for a
minute to talk, and several hundred men, women and children had come
between him and Andy, pushing and crowding and surging, because a band
had started playing somewhere. Andy got down the steps and out upon
the sand, and Jack was thereafter but a memory. He found the loose
sand hard walking with his lame leg, and almost as crowded as the
promenade, and as he stood for a minute looking up at the board walk
above him, it occurred to him that if he could get somewhere and stay
there long enough, every human being at the Casino would eventually
pass by him. He went up the steps again and worked his way along the
edge of the walk until he found a vacant spot on the railing and sat
grimly down upon it to wait.

Many cigarettes he smoked while he roosted there, watching until the
eyes of him ached with the eternal panorama of faces that were
strange. Many times he started eagerly because he glimpsed a fluffy,
blond pompadour with blue eyes beneath, and fancied for an instant
that it was Mary.

Then, when he was speculating upon the advisability of following the
stream of people that flowed out upon the pleasure pier, Mary passed
by so close that her skirt brushed his toes; passed him by, and he sat
there like a paralytic and let her go. And in the heart of him was a
queer, heavy throb that he did not in the least understand.

She was dressed in blue linen with heavy, white lace in patches here
and there, and she had a big, white hat tilted back from her face and
a long white plume drooping to one shoulder. Another girl was with
her, and a man--a man with dented panama hat and pink cheeks and a
white waistcoat and tan shoes; a man whom Andy suddenly hated most
unreasonably.

When they were all but lost in the crowd, Andy got down, gripped his
cane vindictively and followed. After all, the man was walking beside
the other girl, and not beside Mary--and the reflection brought much
solace. With the nodding, white feather to guide him, he followed them
down the walk, lost them for a second, saw them turn in at the
wide-open doors of the natatorium, saw them pause there, just inside.
Then a huge woman pushed before him, stood there and narrowed his
range of vision down to her own generous hat with its huge ros